Sand Witches in the Hamptons (9781101597385) (5 page)

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

I
had a decapitated rat and a deranged reader. I also had a pissed-off Pomeranian and a panic attack. Anyone would.

I rushed inside the building and slammed the door behind me, as if the dead rat could get in and go for my throat. Little Red snarled at being shaken up and kept in his carrier. I ignored him and leaned against the inside wall, catching my breath. Then I realized I had to go back outside to get my shopping bags. I really needed those painkillers, and the Mallomars. Anyone would.

The rat was still dead. Both pieces. People walking past averted their eyes, the way New Yorkers did when confronted with crazy bag ladies. I looked around. I was the crazy bag lady.

I gathered my broken cookies and stepped-on candy bars. Everything was in pieces, including the rat. The only item intact was the Tylenol bottle, which no one could open at the best of times. This was not one of them.

I gathered my stuff into one bag and covered the psycho's victim with the other. I stopped gasping and shaking and whimpering. My shock turned into anger.

How dare that . . . that person lurk at my building, waiting for me to leave, just so she could terrify me with a mangled corpse? What kind of person thrives on mutilating animals, or scaring people? Not the kind I wanted to meet.

I looked around but spotted no one suspicious, no one hiding behind a parked car or in a basement stairwell.

I didn't look too hard, just clutched my stuff and keyed the door open again. Little Red yipped in his carrier, between growls. “Hush up. You can't climb the stairs to the third floor by yourself anyway,” I told the three-legged dog. The first-floor renters yelled so loudly at each other, maybe they wouldn't hear him. I hustled up the stairs, talking to calm both of us.

“Easy, good boy. The rat is dead. We're safe. For now. And we're getting out of Dodge in the morning.”

I eyed my door to see if anyone had broken the locks. That's what all the good detectives did, wasn't it? Nothing looked different, and nothing waited on my doormat. I breathed easier.

As soon as Red scrambled out of his container, I called the manager to get rid of the rodent before any of the other tenants saw it. I did not say I had anything whatsoever to do with its presence.

Then I called Van at the police station. He told me rats died all the time.

Not with their heads cut off, they didn't.

“Get out of town. Escalation is never a good sign.”

“Neither is animal torture. That's how serial killers start, right?”

“You don't know if the unsub killed the animal herself or simply butchered an already dead one to get your attention.”

“It got my attention, all right.” An unsub is an unidentified suspect, which I knew from those same cop shows on TV. “And I know precisely who did this. You've got to find her.”

“I'll get my guys tracking this Deni person. Save the rat.”

“You've got to be kidding.”

He thought about it. “I guess not. If you can't do that, at least get out of town.”

I looked out the window at the fading twilight. “It's too late. I'm not going outside at night, when I couldn't tell if she's waiting for me. Even if I took a cab to the Hampton Jitney bus stop, she could follow me. I'd be waiting there by myself, in the dark.” With Little Red, my laptop, a suitcase, and tote bag of drawing supplies and broken cookies. I'd eaten a flattened Cadbury bar while I talked.

“Okay, I'll be off duty in an hour. I'll bring a pizza, sleep on your couch, then put you on the bus in the morning. How's that sound?”

I'd lived alone for years, until Little Red this spring. I was good at it, came and went when I wanted, ate cereal for supper if I wished, left the bed unmade sometimes. Solitude worked better for my work, with few distractions. I had my books, my friends, lots to do and see in the city, and Paumanok Harbor for when I wanted, rarely, to have my family's company. Of all the things I feared—and the list suddenly kept growing by the minute—staying alone in my apartment had never been one of them.

I almost wept in gratitude that Van offered to stay the night. “Sounds like heaven.” I started hiding the cookies and candy and dirty dishes and my washed bras hanging from the shower curtain. “Thank you for being such a good friend.”

I felt so much better I decided to check for phone messages after I fed the dog, while I cleaned the apartment and waited for Van. Another threat from Deni wouldn't bother me now, not when a policeman was on his way. He'd hear it, get the call traced, nab the bad guy, or girl, like they did in books, and I could go back to worrying about the Andanstans and the rash.

Oh, my god, the rash. And Van was coming. I raced to the mirror to look and lather on concealer, bronzer, a flesh-colored Band-Aid under my nose. Now I'd pass for someone with a bad reaction to a botox injection. Or a battered wife.

Deni hadn't called. Sure, she didn't have time, watching the apartment, catching rats.

My father had. “I'm on my way out of the house, baby girl, but I got a whiff of someone telling secrets, something bad.”

As in I smell a rat? Thanks, Dad. You're too late.

“. . . And I need to make sure you won't go anywhere in the morning until I call before my tee time. I won't be home tonight, but I really need you to do this favor for my friend. Unless that's the secret. Maybe. No, it doesn't smell.”

I ignored my father's mental wanderings. His friend was going to be out of luck if he needed me to show him around town or let him sleep in the spare bedroom. I hated to disappoint my father, but he'd understand. He'd be a hell of a lot more disappointed if I ended up like the rat. And if his friend's problem was so critical, Dad could have canceled his date for tonight.

I kept cleaning and packing and looking out the window.

The downstairs buzzer went off, too soon to be Van. I didn't answer it, but someone else in the building could buzz the door open, like Mrs. Abbottini did with the flowers.

I got my pepper spray out of my purse and dragged the love seat in front of my apartment door. Of course I had to stand on the cushions to reach the peephole to see who knocked on it.

Deni might have been better than the person on the other side, banging on the door with a heavy, double-sized fist.

“Who is it?” I called out, stalling for time while I pushed the furniture back into place.

“You know damn well who it is, Willy, so let me in.”

“Who called you?” I sure as hell didn't call Lou the Lout, Lou from DUE, Lou who was hard, ruthless, with a sense of duty as oversized as his meaty paws. The older man's duty these days appeared to consist of eliminating threats to paranormals everywhere, but to Paumanok Harbor psychics in particular. I lived in dread he'd find me more of a menace than a benefit because his methods did not bear considering. His means encompassed magic, and his modus operandi had nothing whatsoever to do with the Bill of Rights. His saving grace, and my continued existence, I felt, was that he liked to stay in my grandmother's good graces. I think so he could stay at her house. Or in her bed, which did not bear considering either.

“Everyone called. Your grandmother, your cousin Lily, your friend at the police station, his lordship in Ireland, Chief Haversmith at the Harbor. Oh, and Mrs. Abbottini next door.”

“I told her to stop buzzing in strangers.”

“I'm not a stranger, and she didn't have to let me in. I have a key.”

Great. The scariest man I knew had a key to my building. He was big and mean and wore disguises. I'd seen him pretend to be a janitor, a farmhand, a limo driver, and a wealthy man about town. Today he had on biker leather, complete with a helmet in his hand, which did not give me confidence in his friendly intentions. “Well, everything is fine now. You didn't need to check on me.”

He lifted a plastic bag with my drugstore's logo on it out of his helmet and held it up so I could see it through the tiny viewer. The rat. Both of them.

I opened the door, in time to watch him put a key in my bottom lock. “You have a key for my door, too?”

He didn't answer, just stared at my face. “What the hell happened to you? No one said the berserker gave you a fat lip.”

So much for the concealer and the Band-Aid.

“It's an allergy, nothing else. An allergy to, um, strawberries.”

“If you're allergic to strawberries, why do you eat them?”

“Listen, I am fine. So you can take your friend”—I gestured toward the plastic bag—“and go. Van is coming.”

“He can't get here for an hour or more. That's why he called me. And I want to look at the emails and notes myself.”

“Van's men are looking into them.”

“My guys can go places the cops can't. Or the Feebies, for that matter.”

Lou and DUE could break any law they wanted, or make up their own. That's why Lou scared me to death, no matter how many people told me he'd been my bodyguard, watching over me for months. Like now, when he pushed right past me without an invitation to come in. At least he left the rat outside the door.

So I made copies of the emails and gave him the note that came with the flowers and explained how Deni'd used my own drawings to send her nasty messages.

“I don't suppose you'd let me take the whole computer to my cyber department, would you?”

“With all my notes and sketches and drawing programs? No way.”

“All right, don't get bent out of shape. We'll take it to Russ at the Harbor. He's as good as my guys anyway.”

“Better.”

“Yeah, he's got cyberpsi talent like we've never seen. They tried to get him to London, too.”

I knew by the “too” he meant me. I refused to go get indoctrinated or whatever they did at the secret Royce. I might have been more prepared for all the woo-woo stuff, but I'd have been their puppet, not myself. Then it occurred to me: “What do you mean,
we'll
take it to Russ?”

“Everything centers there lately, and it's too dangerous for you in the city until we get rid of these threats. So you'll leave after Van brings the pizza. I'll get there tomorrow, once I make sure no one follows you. Are you packed?”

He had to have noticed the suitcase out, and Little Red's traveling case by the front door. “Van said he'd drop me at the bus stop in the morning and see that I got on okay.”

“That's not soon enough.”

“Well, that's when it will be. I need to speak to my father in the morning.”

That got his attention. “What did he say?”

“A friend needs a favor. Oh, you mean what did he foresee? He smelled a rat, but he heard an Irish tenor, and a horse.”

Lou rubbed his chin, all stubbly today in keeping with his rough appearance, not that he needed a scruffy beard to look menacing. “An Irish singer and a horse, huh? Not much to go on, is it?”

“It never is.”

“But he felt a threat?”

“I guess.”

“And he nailed the rat.”

“There's that, even if the thing already arrived. And I couldn't have done anything about it, no matter when or what I knew.”

“You could have left Manhattan.”

“I'm leaving as soon as I speak to him. He's not home now and doesn't put his cell phone on when he's on a date, but he said he really needs to talk to me.”

Lou looked out the window, searching for spies. Then he pulled the curtains closed. What, did he think Deni'd be shooting at me from a roof across the street? “Listen, my father's warnings are always vague. This time he's right. That rat will be smelling soon if you don't take it away.”

“Yeah, I'll get it to the lab, try to figure out what the thing actually died of. See if the techs can guess at a weapon or find fingerprints on the note. Maybe send a sketch artist to Mrs. Abbottini for a better description of the delivery kid. Meantime, I'll have someone watching the building until you leave with Van in the morning.”

For a minute I'd been afraid he'd insist on staying, too. “Thanks. That'll be great.”

“And do not go out until then, hear me?” He looked down at the dog, who had one of my shoes in his mouth and was shaking it, pretending the shoe was a dangerous rat. I grabbed my sneaker. If he couldn't kill it, Little Red would pee on it.

“Red can use his papers until then. Or the garbage alley by the back exit.”

“Good. It's too easy for someone to follow your patterns if they know you have a pet to walk.”

“His picture's on my website, so she didn't need to be any genius sleuth.”

He gave one more look around, searching for heaven knew what, nodded when he didn't find it, then headed for the door. I felt safer, knowing he'd have the place watched, knowing the guard would be someone else. I started to say good-bye, but I had to ask, “Um, you don't happen to have any kind of rash, do you?”

“Yeah, on my . . .” He turned in the doorway, staring as if he could see into my head, wondering if I'd developed new talent the people at Royce could use and manipulate. “How'd you know about that?”

“A wild guess. There's a lot going around.”

“Lily mentioned something about that, but she said the Health Department was on it.”

“They think it has something to do with the flu shots, but it doesn't. It's blood that brings it on, the pinprick, a rose thorn, a paper cut, a nosebleed, not the serum. And as far as I can figure, the only people getting the rash are those who were on the cruise ship the night of the storm.”

He shook his head. “The ship was full of sand and water and muck from being tipped over before we got on board. Maybe the floors and walls got filled with a brown tide thing or started growing black mold. Something toxic in the carpets.”

I hated to say it, but knew I had to. “No, it's the sand. They're mad.”